Fougner, G. Selmer (1884–1941), was a cosmopolitan bon vivant who wrote the daily wine and spirits column for the New York Sun from its inception in 1933 until his untimely death, and in the process essentially created modern drinks writing. Born in Chicago to an intellectual French-Norwegian family that moved to France when he was nine, Fougner was educated at the Sorbonne before returning to America, where he worked at a number of New York newspapers, sometimes returning to France in their service: he was, for a time, the society editor of the legendary Paris edition of the New York Herald and, during World War I, reported on the fighting in that country for the Sun with skill and courage. After a few years working for the US Treasury Department, he rejoined the Sun, there to remain for the rest of his days. Somewhere along the way, Fougner’s easy acquaintance with the good things in life (and perhaps his well-upholstered figure) earned him the nickname “Baron.”
In 1933, with the repeal of Prohibition looming, Baron Fougner was the natural person for the Sun to assign to write a twenty-five-part series to help readers navigate the unfamiliar waters of legal wines and spirits. The column, a daily one, made its debut on October 20 of that year. By the time Prohibition was actually repealed Fougner was well into his second series. After that, the column was a fixture of the paper and ran until his death. By March 1934, Along the Wine Trail, as it was called, had assumed the form it would retain right up to the end. After a brief epigraph—a bible verse, a few lines of poetry—Fougner would typically use the first part of the two half columns he was allotted to weigh in on some topic that was on his mind. Before his column, wine writing tended to be high-toned and mystifying, while cocktail writing was jocular and even aggressively vulgar. Fougner was neither. As Lucius Beebe noted, he was “the arch-foe of pretentiousness and ritualism in drinking,” but neither was he boorish or particularly humorous. See Beebe, Lucius. While wine was his specialty, he genuinely liked cocktails and beer and did not condescend to those who drank them, nor did he assume that everything imported was ipso facto better than what was produced in the United States (indeed, he was an early and influential advocate of American wines). He covered unusual spirits such as vodka and tequila, in those days little known in America, and he knew his whisky.
The second half of his column was generally devoted to readers’ questions, which he answered with patience, no matter how stupid (the one asking whether all scotch whisky was actually made in Australia comes to mind). When he didn’t know the answer, he threw the question open to his readers. His was a broad net: the
Fougner was a busy man. Besides his Sun column and the books that were woven together from excerpts from it, he wrote a column for Scribner’s Magazine and guides to New York restaurants and gourmet dinners; founded and led Les Amis d’Escoffier, a fine dining society; judged cocktail competitions; toured wine regions; and other such things too numerous to mention. But it is for his column and the patient, informed, skeptical way he guided readers toward the good things to drink and gently (usually) shepherded them away from the bad that he will be remembered. Baron Fougner is the Jerry Thomas of drinks writers. See Thomas, Jeremiah P. “Jerry”.
Beebe, Lucius. “This New York.” Oakland Tribune, April 15, 1961, 21.
Fougner, G. Selmer. Along the Wine Trail. Boston: Stratford, 1935.
By: David Wondrich
G. Selmer Fougner, from a 1940 magazine advertisement.
Wondrich Collection.
G. Selmer Fougner, from a 1940 magazine advertisement. Source: Wondrich Collection.